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Letters: March 8

Las Cruces Sun-News

Posted:
03/08/2014 01:00:00 AM MST

Obamacare puts even more Americans on dole

Facing a potentially difficult election cycle this November, Democrats, trying to remove the Obamacare albatross from around their necks, created a new spin: "Obamacare now allows some to not have to work, thus reducing their health care costs due to government subsidies available for those earning less money."

Democrats are now promoting more people going on the government dole and not contributing their labor to society, thus putting more burden on those who contribute. Great!

Aside from the total absurdity of such thinking, there are three reasons why this is harmful.

First, it adds additional costs to the federal budget by requiring the government to pay for their welfare and health care premiums. This further increases the national debt, now over $17 trillion. That's $17 trillion with a T! $17,000,000,000,000!

Second, it gets worse. Non-workers don't pay income tax. Employers also match income tax for employees. This loss of revenue compounds the burden on the federal budget and further adds to the national debt.

Third, those not working don't contribute to our Gross Domestic Product. We can't have what we don't produce.

Such a spin competes with the total stupidity of Nancy Pelosi's statement regarding Obamacare, "we need to pass it to see what's in it."

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Lord help Americans with thinking like this from our elected leaders.

Robert K. Murray Las Cruces

Put meat inspections under FDA oversight

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is still expanding the list of retailers carrying meat unfit for human consumption to Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and 970 locations in California alone. About 8.7 million pounds were shipped all through 2013 by Rancho Feeding Corp. of Petaluma, Calif.

The recall comes in the wake of USDA's new "inspection" program that allows the meat industry to increase speed of processing lines and replace federal inspectors with plant employees. According to the USDA inspector general, this has resulted in partial failure to remove fecal matter, undigested food, and other contaminants that may contain deadly E. coli and listeria bacteria.

Traditionally, USDA has catered more to the interests and profitability of the meat industry than the health and safety of American consumers. Consumer interests come into play only when large numbers of us get sick. Having USDA protect consumers is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.

The Obama administration should reallocate responsibility for all food safety to the Food and Drug Administration. In the meantime, each of us can assume responsibility for our own safety by switching to the rich variety of soy-based products offered by our favorite supermarket.

Ryan Gillbert El Paso

Change the language, change the interpretation

There is a form of psychological subversion taking place in our American society that you either wittingly or unwittingly are participating in. The terms residents, citizens, and taxpayers are increasingly disappearing from the speeches and thinking of politicians and reports of those in the media. These terms are being replaced by terms such as stakeholders and customers.

Whereas the terms resident, citizen, and taxpayer indicate ideologically inclusive and egalitarian concepts, the terms stakeholder and customer indicate exclusionary and stratified standards. Most of us understand that we are a resident in a community, a citizen of the community, and pay taxes of some sort or another even if only sales taxes or usage/impact fees. So there is a sense of inclusion and shared obligation in these terms. There are no valid statutory degrees in "citizenship."

In this sense, the terms stakeholder and customer are neither inclusive nor democratic. One is a stakeholder only to the degree one's vested interest is accepted and recognized, and the more one seems to have invested determines one's relevance as a stakeholder. There are, by definition, major and minor stakeholders. With the term customers, there are erstwhile customers, steady customers, preferred customers and non-customers, whose status a potential customers requires qualification before any solicitation is deemed worthwhile.

More and more, we see used terms that are less inclusive and democratic. Such a tactic is not new. It is part of the recurring desire and consequent strategy of one segment of the population to gain advantage over another and to inviolate those gains by establishing a different social norm.

Change the language and the terms, and you change the interpretations available to you. Change the words of the contract, and you change the essence of the agreement.

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